Understanding Thomas Berger

This is a comprehensive survey of the genre-jumping author's impressive body of work. Understanding Thomas Berger introduces readers to a veteran novelist best known for his wry explorations of the dialectic between the great American dream and the realities of middle-class American life. As Brooks Landon notes, Berger openly resists easy classification. Indeed Berger's uncanny ability to satirize literary genres while participating in them has defined his career and led to such novels as his classic Westerns Little Big Man and The Return of Little Big Man, his detective story Who Is Teddy Villanova?, his Arthurian romance Arthur Rex, and his epic Reinhart series. Landon approaches these works thematically to advance understanding of Berger's motives, influences, techniques, style, and language - and it is language that seems key to unlocking Berger's puzzle. Landon's study carves fresh inroads into the complex literary landscape of this grimly comic moralist and master of fiction's many forms.